Mexico officials: No one wants to face us in World Cup qualifying finale

By Brent Latham

Officials at last week's CONCACAF meeting failed to reach an agreement on scheduling due to teams looking to avoid Mexico at the end of the Hex.

Officials at last week’s meeting in Miami of the six CONCACAF nations involved in next year’s Hexagonal failed to come to an agreement on the scheduling at least partly because no one wanted to close the competition against Mexico, that country’s national teams director confirmed Tuesday.

“It’s true that they wanted to avoid Mexico,” Héctor González Iñárritu told mediotiempo.com. “This was a big point that stopped us from reaching a compromise.”

The Mexican administrator added that FIFA had failed to provide guidance for seeding the nations, which proved another obstacle preventing the Federations from coming up with a universally agreeable solution.

“They didn’t send a parameter to say, ‘Listen, seed yourselves according to how you ended up in the semifinal phase, or the FIFA ranking,’” he said. “It’s hard for six teams who are fighting for a ticket to the World Cup to come to an agreement when there’s no parameter for calling yourself the No. 1 team or the No. 6 team.”

Nevertheless, a primary obstacle to coming to an agreement were the objections of the other Federations to closing the Hexagonal against Mexico, a detail confirmed by the President of the Honduran Federation on Monday.

The final round match schedule will be drawn by FIFA in the next 30 days.